My kids love watching family movies based on books. They like watching their favorite heroes coming to live. Sometimes they prefer the way they imagined the character better than the way it is acted but still! They love the experience. They even come back and read the book to make sure it was represented correctly. It opens us interesting discussion around the family table. If you want to live this experience with little ones, here are some good family movies based on books.
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Good Family Movies Based on Books
Hotel for Dogs
Hotel for Dogs is a 2009 family comedy film starring Jake T. Austin, Emma Roberts, Troy Gentile, Kyla Pratt, Johnny Simmons, Lisa Kudrow, Kevin Dillon and Don Cheadle. The movie is based on the 1971 book of the same name by Lois Duncan. Andi and her brother reside at a foster home, where animals are not allowed. However, the siblings are secretly caring for a cute dog, Friday. They decide to create an animal shelter from an old hotel. Friday and all his new friends are causing so much noise that the neighbors are starting to complain. It is up to the siblings to find a way to the hotel not to get discovered.
The Gruffalo-
The Gruffalo is a 2009 animated television movie starring James Corden, Robbie Coltrane, Helena Bonham Carter, John Hurt, Rob Brydon and Tom Wilkinson. The movie is based on the 1999 picture book by Julia Donaldson. The movie showcases a mouse who is in search of a nut in the forest. On his journey, he comes across a snake, an owl and a fox, all who want to eat him for lunch. The mouse needs to survive, so he comes up with a story about meeting a monster named Gruffalo, causing the critters to scurry away. The little mouse is confident he is untouchable now; that is until he comes face to face with Gruffalo himself.
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Paddington-
Paddington is a 2014 live action/computer animated family comedy movie starring Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi, Nicole Kidman and Ben Whishaw. The film is based on the 1958 children’s literature fictional character Paddington by Michael Bond. Paddington is a young bear who is in the city in search of a home. He is starting not to like city life until he meets the Brown family, who offer him a place to live. However, Paddington soon catches the sights of a local taxidermist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxqydAIjf3I
Did you watch one these family movies based on books? Did you read the books with little ones? Tell me.
I loved all of these movies and books. So neat to see my childhood favorites come onto the big screen.
The other day I saw DVD The Secret Garden at the library. We all loved the book! My kids don’t watch TV yet, but I offered them to check out that DVD for the first family movie night. They looked at the cover and told me that all characters looked wrong and not how they imagined them in their heads. My oldest said, “Don’t check it out! Just don’t! I am not going to watch it!” So their goes our first family movie night…
We haven’t seen any of these yet! Adding them to our Christmas break list!
These are some classics! We loved Paddington
My son is 17 years old now but he still loves watching these types of movies.
I haven’t seen any of these yet, but they all look so cute! Definitely on my list of movies to watch. :)
I have never read the books, neither did I watch the movies! But there are being added on my reading-list so as on my watch-list!
thank you for this post!
We recently watched The Gruffalo – it was such a cute movie!
I never knew that Paddington was based on a book. I’ll have to look that up because my son loves that movie and he loves to read!
I haven’t seen Paddington yet, something to look forward to with my nieces this Christmas :)
We all loved the Paddington movie, and the Hotel for Dogs and love good family movies based on books. I will be getting some of these movies for the Holidays!
I’ve never seen any of these, so I will have to check them out!
We loved Hotel for Dogs! My son actually sat and watched the whole movie with me.
We haven’t seen Paddington yet but it’s on the list.
There are some really good ones here, some I’ve as yet not seen either. Thanks for posting :-)